The first meeting of the new season for the Falkirk Probus Club took place on Tuesday, 10th September, at its usual venue, the Camelon Social Club. 23 members and one guest were welcomed by Chairman Hamish Scott to the meeting, and enjoyed a convivial tea and coffee before being introduced to the speaker of the day, Mr.Bill Nisbet from Tesco Stores’ Community Involvement Department.
Bill, a local man, has been with Tesco for 25 years, and ran several stores around Edinburgh before being appointed first manager of the new Redding Road store. He progressed through more and bigger stores until being appointed to study waste management throughout Tesco stores, with the task of saving a quarter of a million pounds in wastage. Liaising between the shop floor sector and management, Bill put in place an innovative waste management process which is still in force.
Bill’s next move was being put forward for the Manager-to-Director programme, and worked on an international project to improve the morale of suppliers through personal contact.
Our speaker went on to explain the Tesco Business Model, describing how between 85 and 90% of Tesco’s business operations are automated, Tesco’s online business is among the biggest in the World, and the plan to achieve this was meant to be attained in 5 years but only took 5 weeks.
Bill went on to describe Tesco’s Community involvement, with stores providing 166 million meals to food banks annually, £150 million to local charities through their Blue Token scheme, and £27 million for cancer research and national charities.
A lively question-and-answer session followed, including some insights into self-service versus face-to-face checkouts.
At the end of the meeting, Mr.Nisbet was awarded the usual hearty vote of thanks for his interesting and entertaining talk.
Thanks were also given to the staff of the Social Club for their services.
The next meeting of the Club, website falkirkprobus.org, will be on Tuesday, 24th September, at 10.00am, and will feature a talk on “Scotland the Myth”.
